Sunday Night - Success?

After Part 1 and Part 2 of losing my pride and dignity and some sanity... I had plans for a solid Sunday.

Plans were to go to Eastern Market with the Marine, buy some high quality feather earrings from that lady with the mohawk who makes awesome earrings/art/everything, maybe buy some art from the man with the platypus hanging from a balloon tshirts and the art with a sad looking snail (he does greeting cards for a living, and his art has a distinctive level of quirky humor), and then hang out with Marine all day and into the evening, when Blair reminds me.

We have plans.

SHIIIITE.

(Okay not really shite, because to be perfectly honest with you the Marine has a deeply entrenched sense of commitment, which involves meeting parents, talking about future children, and texting me every five mins - when I don't answer, said texts, he asks our mutual friends to text me to find out if I'm still breathing, alive, busy, not busy, willing to answer them, etc... And while on some levels I'm ready for a step towards commitment, I'm still a freebird - and this bird you cannot change, and you definitely cannot shove me into a 200 texts a day about nothing aside from nothing kind of cage because I have pretty intimidatingly large wings, and I'm claustrophobic as f*ck - don't get me wrong he's a sweet, kind, caring, chivalrous, lovely man, whom I would trust with my life and my friend's lives, but what he wants I'm not ready to give)

So I bail on Marine before you can say lickety-ick and hit the road to my apartment for a difficult shower (see sliced fingers + shampoo) and get dressed for the Networking/Bday/Fairwell to the 4Ps Party for my homeslice A, whom contrary to popular belief - i.e. HIS - I adore.

Well the night's going pretty solidly, having a drink, having a good night, when some fellow, whom we'll call Not Ben, steps to the edge of our group and shouts to someone across the bar - "Yo BEN! (Ben/Not Ben - see where the name came from) Split a pitcher with me? I'm buying!"

Ben - not paying attention, hears none of this, so our friend Jess alleviates the issue by shouting to Ben (who may or may not be standing merely 5-6 ft away from Not Ben), "YO BEN! This guy's buying you a free pitcher."

The rest of the conversation went something like a 8 year old girl playing telephone with her bestie i.e. this...

Ben - "OH Sweet - what kind?"
Jess - "What Kind?"
Not Ben - "What Kind?"
Jess - "What Kind?"
Me - It doesn't matter it's free."
Not Ben - "It's not free."
Jess - "It's not free"
Ben - "Ok, But What kind?"
Jess - "Ok, But What kind?"
Me - "Free means it shouldn't matter."
Not Ben - "It's not free, I owe him money... Well what do you want?"
Jess - "It's not free, I owe him money... Well what do you want?
Ben - "I don't know"
Jess - "I don't know"
Not Ben - "I was thinking rolling rock."
Jess - "I was thinking rolling..."
Not Ben - "Aw, hell," Not Ben throws up his arms and traipses through our circle because this was taking too long.

After he bought the pitcher, he returned pitcher and all, trying to engage our slowly diminishing circle until it was just him and me, and my conversationalist skills were at the bottom of the barrel, so I know I was no help, because I was pretty much staring at him trying to figure out what color his friggin' eyes were. Are they black? Are they brown? Are they Navy Blue? Are they 20 shades darker than steel gray? Does he even have them because seriously it looks like he's peering into my soul with two small abysses carved into his face.

For the next 2 hours, I spent probably 1:30 hours talking to Not Ben, smiling as he struggled through asking the typical DC questions to ask anyone you meet, laughing while he and the Organist for the Nationals swapped stories about music played during the games, and me offering the tipsy fellow a ride home since he literally lives 4 blocks or so away from me.

Not Ben is a reasonably tall, cute kind of man with piercing brown eyes (I never knew brown eyes could pierce) who looks like he belongs in Ireland (and no his hair is not red). He's casual, loud, a bit obnoxious - not necessarily in a bad way, and full of passion. He also knows my fake Jewish Brother who went to AU four years ahead of me, so he had a lot of good stories for me to use on future family vacays. Oh Yeah!

I may or may not have a crush.

I drove him back to his freshly destroyed home - thanks Irene! - where we shared a couple of beers, some stories, phone numbers, a frightening experience where some random man crossed the street to throw a branch at his roommate's car, and plans to meet the following day for brunch or lunch or coffee or fro yo.

-next morning, the butt crack of early-

He texts me something about what I want to do.
My response was textured with ugh, um, sleep, and bed, which kept him at bay until an hour after the butt crack of early.
He texts something about not knowing why he woke up so early.
My response was littered with Bahs, humbugs, bunny rabbits, and non distinguishable mumbo jumbo.
He texts back a hour later to let him know when I'm up.
My response was "Up-ish"

So after getting up-ish, and struggling through my morning routine due to TIRED because someone kept texting me unnecessarily early, we make plans to have some Fro Yo.

We met up in the Bethesda at the Yogiberry, and as I'm reaching for raspberry lemonade flavor (which BTWs is MONEY), so does he.



I'm not saying we're connected by some deep cosmic destiny, because I'm sure that when the Greek Gods separated the human race 'a la' lightning bolt, our souls probably were originally connected on more than just a similar taste in frozen delights, but hey - isn't it cool we like the same Fro Yo? - Yes I realize I'm a teenager...

So the date was nice. It was cute, we talked - sometimes in different accents (hey - isn't it cool we both like doing accents? - Fun Fact: I can do 17 distintive accents), took a walk, held hands, sat in a park, watched children run around with their parents, and then separated so that I could meet Zoya down in Dupont and so that he could go grocery shopping.

After making a fool of myself and losing more of my pride than my dignity, as I'm slowly realizing. It's nice to think, 'not everything has to be a dramatic horror story.' Sometimes things just click.